1. Field of the Invention
Our invention relates generally to detecting and locating utility outages. More particularly, our invention relates to automatically detecting a utility outage within a utility provider""s network and identifying and locating potential causes for the outage.
2. Description of the Background
In today""s environment, a utility provider is not able to quickly and easily detect and locate service outages. For example, storms can cause downed utility lines, affecting electrical and telephony service to one or more customers on a street, in a neighborhood, or in a town. In other cases, an outage is specific to a particular customer, related to internal premises wiring. At times, the utility provider is able to detect the problem and at other times, the utility provider only learns of the outage once customers make service calls. Regardless of how the provider learns of the outage, it must still physically search for the exact location of the failure wasting both time and money. In addition, customers often do not know the status of an outage and either flood the provider""s service department with calls or are left wondering when service will be restored.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide methods and apparatus that allow a utility provider to quickly detect failures prior to service calls being made and to automatically locate and identify potential causes for the failures without physically searching the entire network. Similarly, it is desirable to provide methods and apparatus that will automatically notify customers of the current status of an outage thereby improving customer satisfaction and reducing the number of service calls.
Under our invention, detection systems are located at each customer premises serviced by a utility provider, or at a subset of customer premises wherein the subset adequately represents the geographical region serviced by the utility provider. Similarly, a monitoring system is located at the utility provider. A communications network, for example the public switched telephone network, the CCS/SS7 network, or a packet network, interconnects the detection systems and the monitoring system. Each detection system comprises a monitoring device to detect the presence/absence of the given utility at the customer premises. The monitoring system comprises a geographical information system, which is a database that correlates the geographical location of the detection systems with the geographical location of the equipment that comprises the utility provider""s network.
Under one embodiment of our invention, the monitoring system queries, in response to a reported outage for example, one or more detection systems via the communications network to determine utility status at each corresponding premises. In response, each queried detection system determines the current utility status at its premises and relays this information back to the monitoring system. In turn, the monitoring system uses the geographical information system and the reported utility status information to determine if an outage/failure has occurred and the possible location and causes for the outage. The monitoring system is also capable of sending messages to the detection systems in the form of audible alarms, lit LEDs, and LCD text messages. Such messages may be sent to inform customers as to the status of an outage.
Under a second embodiment of our invention, the monitoring system configures all or a subset of the detection systems to automatically contact the monitoring system to report utility status. This reporting can occur, for example, on a periodic basis, or when a detection system detects a utility outage. Similar to the first embodiment, the monitoring system can query additional detection systems upon learning of a reported outage to further locate the cause of the outage, and can send messages to the detection systems to report utility status.